'ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT' CHALLENGE WITH MONEY SUPERMARKET

Hello all! Hope you've been enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend and the little bit of sun we had? I've got something slightly different to show you all tonight, and some of you may have already seen a sneak peek at this if you follow me on Instagram. Today Dan and I took a trip to our nearest Ikea store bright and early to miss the holiday crowds, with a small list of items to give a certain area of my room a little makeover. I was recently contacted by the lovely people at Money Supermarket, and challenged to make some sort of home improvement on a budget of £50. The idea of the challenge is to show how you can make a big difference with a small budget, and me being the Interior Design nut I am, was super excited the get started!

I decided that spending the money on doing the whole room wouldn't have been very beneficial  as I'm hoping to move out sooner rather than later so felt it would be a bit of a waste of time. Instead I concentrated on one area I spend a lot of time at, and have wanted to 'make over' for quite a while now. That place is of course my desk area, which was very cluttered, mish mashed and crammed full. Not only that, the glass of the desk had a very modern, 'office' feel which doesn't sit very well with the rest of the room, so putting all of my efforts into this work space made the most sense. 

Here's what the space looked like before:

As you can see, it's ok, but it's nothing specialand wasn't the nicest space to work in. I decided I wanted to go for a desk that was more sleek and simple, in white wood to tie in with the rest of my furniture. This is where Ikea comes in! I'm a huge fan of Ikea and have had my eye on a few of their workstations for a while, but none of the ones I liked offered very much work space. After a search on Pinterest I spotted a few desks and tables that uses trestles as legs, and instantly knew that's what I wanted mine to be like. It's a simple solution that looks really cool, and is easy to put up (and take down if need be). Luckily for me, Ikea stocked a range of trestle legs and separate table tops, and mine came in at just £26, leaving plenty of the budget to dress the area.

Here's the after shots taken earlier today after a very fun and easy make over that I think you'll agree looks so much better!

A little change can make a huge difference, don't you think? I'm in love with how bright and colourful everything looks, yet how clean and inviting it is. I've kept the same storage baskets underneath as before, purely because they hold a lot and are easy to stack up. They fit underneath much neater and tidier than they did on the old glass shelf, and still leave plenty of leg room which I never had before (you couldn't even tuck the chair underneath as the glass shelves stuck out so far!). I swapped the cups and pots I was using on the desk for clear glass versions found in charity shops, and added splashes of colour with jars and fresh flowers. The chair was in major need of a reupholstering after the fabric had got ripped (hence the Union Jack cushion in the before picture - covering a multitude of sins!), so I went to a local fabric shop and picked out a printed cotton material that tied all the colours together, then got crafty and replaced the ripped fabric with the new. The last of the £50 budget was spent on finishing touches such as a cork board for all my pictures and an extra cushion for the chair. Amazingly I've come away with change from it all, so I'll be keeping my eye out for that little extra something to finish the whole thing off, but for now I'm so happy with the end result!

Here's where the money went:

Linnmon White Table Top - Ikea - £13.00

Lerberg Trestles (£5 each) - Ikea - £10.00

Vaggis Noticeboard - Ikea - £3.25

Printed Fabric For Chair - Abakhan - £3.13

Malin Lov Cushion - Ikea - £4.00

Pink Ribbed Glass Jar - Wilko - £5.00

Glass Jars/Pen Pots (0.49p each) - Charity Shop - £0.98

Glass Vase - Charity Shop - £1.99

Fresh Flowers (£3 per bunch) - Co Op - £6.00

Total Spend - £47.35

Change - £2.65

I'm in love with my new workspace and think it will help me to enjoy blogging even more now I have somewhere nice to write and put my posts together, and the whole thing brightens up the room completely. I really hope I've shown that you can make a big difference when you change just one part of the room. I wanted to show that even if you have a small budget, you can still do something that makes a huge improvement and you don't always need to re vamp to whole room! 

Thanks so much to Money Supermarket for asking me to take part and letting my inner Interior Designer come out to play for a few days! 

What are your best budget buys when it comes to home improvements?

Disclaimer: I was asked to take part in the 'Room For Improvement' challenge by Money Supermarket who provided me with the £50 budget. Although I was given the budget, I have not been compensated to write this post, and, as always, all views are my own and 100% honest.